Episode 10 Sustaining a Play-to-Earn Economy

Episode 10: Sustaining a Play-to-Earn Economy

Episode 10

Sustaining a Play-to-Earn Economy

Jeff "Jiho" Zirlin is the co-founder of Axie Infinity. We cover his involvement with the Axie ecosystem, the game's economic model, and why they developed a sidechain.

This episode is brought to you by:

Coinbase Prime. Coinbase Prime combines advanced trading, battle-tested custody, financing, and prime services in a single solution. Clients have used our comprehensive investing platform to execute some of the largest trades in the industry because we are the only publicly-traded company with experience trading and custodying crypto assets at scale. Get started with Coinbase Prime today at coinbase.com/prime.

[00:02:02] - [First question] - His history and what lead him to work on Axie Infinity

[00:05:26] - The arc of gaming and its evolution leading up to today

[00:07:12] - A high-level overview of Axie Infinity and how you play it

[00:08:21] - The size, scope, and user base of Axie today

[00:09:10] - Thoughts on onboarding and educating their player base 

[00:10:53] - What he thought Axie could become in the early days

[00:12:42] - Difficulties of creating a sustainable game with an economic structure

[00:15:26] - Why there was such huge adoption in the Philippines 

[00:16:53] - The guild’s scholarship model and endorsing Web3 literacy

[00:18:06] - Whether or not the game has always been designed to be a window into crypto

[00:19:41] - Thoughts on how Axie could impact the real world 

[00:21:37] - Why build their own chain, wallet, and ecosystem and how he’d build it today

[00:23:46] - Challenges scaling their business with their own unique ecosystem

[00:25:46] - Internal politics and user mentality around Axie and Sky Mavis

[00:26:46] - Managing and aligning user expectations and how many employees they have

[00:29:51] - Deciding which levers to pull on and which to retire for the sake of the project

[00:32:45] - Understanding how changes made positively impact Axie

[00:33:31] - Inflation and deflation cycles of in-game currency and native tokens

[00:34:24] - Changing player dynamics and public response to them

[00:35:38] - How the structure of the game rewards the builders and what having an Axie unlocks for players

[00:37:19] - Future developments, the builder program, and plans for the future

[00:39:01] - Why play-to-earn is different than play-and-earn gaming

[00:40:55] - How Ronin works and unique characteristics compared to other L2 chains

[00:49:55] - When we may see another game developer build on Ronin

[00:50:36] - What he’s most excited to see built over the next six months and six years

Sustaining a Play-to-Earn Economy

Introduction

Eric
My guest today is Axie Infinity co-founder Jeff Jiho. The Colossus team covered the Axie origin story in September of last year, but we felt it was an ideal time to revisit the play-to-earn pioneer. Jiho and I cover his involvement with the Axie ecosystem, including gameplay, the economic model, and creating a side chain. Please enjoy my conversation with Jiho.

Background and Overview

Eric
Jiho, thank you for joining today. I really appreciate having you on the show. When I first met Jiho at NFT Basel, I was introduced by a friend. I started up talking to him about Axie. He was extremely patient with his time, and I noticed a group of people around taking photos, and they weren't taking photos of me. They were waiting for autographs and taking pictures, and it just blew my mind at how many people from all over the world were just so excited to see you down in Miami. Later in the day I saw you shooting what looked like a music video, so I really felt like you're one of the rock stars in crypto NFTs gaming. I appreciate you coming today. You grew up collecting fossils, playing World of Warcraft, and you wrote a thesis about speculative bubbles and economic systems in college. I really can't think of anyone better to create an economic structure in a game, but I'd just be curious to hear your start, how you ended up in Axie, where it all began.

Access the full transcript
Sign in or register to view episode transcripts.

Contact

Get in touch at help@joincollossus.com